Mobile vehicles such as cars, trucks, vans, recreational vehicles and trailers have become increasingly popular in today's mobile society. As a result of the more extensive use of these vehicles, maintenance problems resulting from the increased exposure of the vehicle's undersiding to corrosive environmental and road conditions have become more of a problem. Of particular concern are the floor assemblies of these vehicles where moisture, dirt and other contaminants from the road surface work their way up through the vehicle floor to cause warping, corrosion or other damage to the vehicle floor.
In view of these problems, several solutions have been proposed for protecting the vehicle floor from road conditions. U.S. Pat. No. 4,930,809 discloses a towable unified floor frame assembly in which a moisture, dirt, insect and pest excluding thin cover is provided underneath the floor frame assembly. This thin covering can be thin plywood, asphalted paper or the like, with or without a net-like reinforcement included therein.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,054,843 discloses a bonded composite insulated floor made up of a deck, supporting plastic beams which are mounted on an underpan, and metal crossing beams which support the underpan. The regions between the deck, plastic beams and underpan are filled with foamed plastic which provides insulation and adhesively and mechanically bond this assembly together.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,456,513 discloses a sound, water and dust barrier for a vehicle which is made up of a central thermoplastic layer covered by thin outer thermoplastic layers.
Although the above discussed patents do present solutions to the problem of protecting a vehicle floor assembly, they also have problems in that the protective structure is expensive, heavy and difficult to install or does not provide adequate protection over a sustained period of use. The present invention was arrived at in order to overcome these problems.